Ready for Summer Heat: Liquid-Cooling Components from Swiftech

"When summer gets really hot, the problem of cooling arises before every computer user. The global warming and the incessant growth of heat dissipation of modern processors and graphics cards make this problem more and more acute. Surely, this is much more of a problem for computer enthusiasts who never run their hardware in its normal operation mode. Many of them don’t like the performance and noise even of the most expensive of air coolers. Some overclockers have already transitioned to liquid cooling systems and others are considering such a move.

Taking the easier path, you can just buy an off-the-shelf liquid cooling system which should only be installed and filled with coolant, but we know perfectly that such systems are not superior to best air coolers and cannot cool anything besides the CPU, e.g. a graphics card. There are also ready-made liquid cooling kits on the market, like Alphacool Xtreme Pro 360 Rev.2 and Swiftech H2O-220 Apex Ultra+. Or you can try to assemble your own cooler out of separate components. Although the process of choosing, searching and purchasing the necessary components is going to take more time than when you buy a ready-made kit, you have much more freedom in terms of configuring it.

In this review we are going to assemble our own liquid cooling system using two pairs of heatsinks, two water-blocks and various accessories from the American company called Swiftech.

We will check out how efficient these components are and will compare the CPU water-block with another water-block and an air super-cooler. We will also see how the performance of a liquid cooling system depends on the number and type of its heatsinks and fans and will cover some other issues along the way. First, we will take a look at each component we are going to use...."